With the advent of modern television services networks, such as cable and satellite systems, subscribers have grown accustomed to receiving a variety of television programming from numerous broadcasting sources. In recent years, technology advances have enabled subscribers to receive an even greater variety of products and services through television services networks. For example, modern cable services networks provide traditional video television programming, telephone services, high speed Internet access, electronic mail services, video-on-demand, information services, and the like. Through the use of set-top boxes (computing systems), cable and satellite television services providers can provide interactive television services to subscribers. Such interactive television services allow customers to interact directly with service providers in response to services and product offerings presented to the subscribers through their television sets.
Recently, many television services providers are beginning to offer dedicated “mosaic” channels in which live feeds of multiple programming are broadcast on a single video channel on the provider's networks. Currently, mosaic channels display a scaled down “windows” of currently broadcasting programs selected by the provider in one or more categories (i.e., news, sports, etc.) also selected by the provider, along with non-program based audio from a live host or background music.
Current mosaics, however, suffer from a number of drawbacks. One drawback is that the content of each mosaic is determined by the service provider. Thus, subscribers have no control over the programs which make up a particular mosaic channel. Moreover, the content selected by the service provider may not be of interest to some subscribers. Another drawback of current mosaics is that each one takes up an entire video channel in a service provider's channel lineup, leaving fewer channels for providing regular full screen programming. It is with respect to these and other considerations that the present invention has been made.